Heinz Field Winter Classic 2011

(This isn’t a football post, but since the 2011 Winter Classic Involved Heinz Field and was hosted by the Steelers, we’re going to make it fit here. Hopefully you enjoy it.)

I had the opportunity to cover the NHL Winter Classic at Heinz Field for my day job over at FanHouse this weekend, and it was a pretty amazing experience.

One of the highlights (for me, anyway) was trying to get on the ice to get my picture taken after the game, only to get yelled at to get off the ice by an NHL official. And you know what’s funny? As I was walking out to the rink it never occurred to me that I was walking on the field until two days later. I never even stopped and looked at the stadium from the field view. Crazy. Anyway, before the game I decided to take a walk around the stadium and get some pictures from the different angles to see what sort of views fans would have. People in the first six rows were ripped off. Check it out…

They added some temporary seats to the open end of the stadium for the game, and apparently they will remain there for the Steelers playoff games. I was amazed at how many seats were actually added. Attendance was 68,111 for the game. Heinz Field capacity for football is around 65,000 and change.

For some additional coverage on the game from me, you can head on over to FanHouse…

The NBC coverage was abysmal. The overhead tracking camera does not work for hockey AT ALL. Very disorienting most of the time. And particularly bad the way NBC executed it–several times there were overhead shots of a couple of defenseman doing nothing while a rush was going on up-ice.

Gretz

Yeah, I didn’t hear anything good about NBC’s coverage. Pretty disappointing how they dropped the ball on it. I can’t recall it being poor the first three times, but everyone seemed pretty angry this time around.

Gretz

Yeah, I didn’t hear anything good about NBC’s coverage. Pretty disappointing how they dropped the ball on it. I can’t recall it being poor the first three times, but everyone seemed pretty angry this time around.

Gretz

Yeah, I didn’t hear anything good about NBC’s coverage. Pretty disappointing how they dropped the ball on it. I can’t recall it being poor the first three times, but everyone seemed pretty angry this time around.